Need help with over exposed headlight

[Bianca.Tarleton]

I shot my brother in law's car this weekend, and eventually I will want to blend two pictures to have two views of the car.

I started out with this:


Then I adjusted the levels and the passenger head light became over exposed. Unfortunately, I didn't take multiple exposures of this shot so I don't have any others to work from. Retaking this photo is not an option, as the car is now over 500 miles away from me





What can I do to fix this headlight problem? Are there any other issues you can see?

As far as any exif data, this was my first time shooting in RAW and I don't have any programs that will read any of the associated data but It will for any of my other JPEG's. Is there any other way I access it?

Thank you!

[zona5101]

dodge the headlights.

[TW0R]

Did you use an adjustment layer? You could paint the levels back down with a soft brush. If not you could just save the original file, and then place it on top of the adjusted one, and do the same thing.

Love that car.

[Edsport]

How's this? I used lightroom's fill option mostly...

[autofocus]

Originally Posted by Bianca.Tarleton

I shot my brother in law's car this weekend, and eventually I will want to blend two pictures to have two views of the car.

I started out with this:


Then I adjusted the levels and the passenger head light became over exposed. Unfortunately, I didn't take multiple exposures of this shot so I don't have any others to work from. Retaking this photo is not an option, as the car is now over 500 miles away from me





What can I do to fix this headlight problem? Are there any other issues you can see?

As far as any exif data, this was my first time shooting in RAW and I don't have any programs that will read any of the associated data but It will for any of my other JPEG's. Is there any other way I access it?

Thank you!

Do exactly what you did with levels and then take the History Brush at 100% opacity and carefully brush over the lights to bring them back to their original state...a few simple steps and you should be good on the image

Vince

[fletch]

I know you can't reshoot but sometimes it nice to know what you could have done.

If you had shot the car with a smaller aperture the lights would have the nice sparkly stary look to them instead of the blob look. They would still have been overexposed, but in a pleaseing way rather than a distracting way.

[JCatara]

Add a new layer. Grab a paint sample off the front bumper. Paint out the bright headlight. Lower the opacity. I lowered it to 75% . Go back to the background layer, use the circukar selection tool.Try to get a good selection around the other light. CTRL-J to copy that to a new layer. Use the move tool and move the selection to where the head light was that you painted out. You can always lower the opacity of the layer that you painted on to see where it belongs if you need to. Then when its where you want it and it looks too small or too big CTRL-T to bring up the transform tool and you can size it better if needed. Then with the top layer selected. press ALT-CTRL-SHIFT -E This makes a layer of all the layers you have On that layer change the blend mode I used Overlay, but soft light or hard light will work too. Its a matter of personal preference. Add a curves or levels adjustment layer on top of that, adjust to taste... Using layers gives you flexibility. You can change blend modes and opacity... Hope this helps